Keith Kahn Harris » The Best Water Skier in Luxembourghttp://www.kahn-harris.org
professionally curious, communally engagedSun, 23 Mar 2014 19:20:42 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2Death of Paul Ardittihttp://www.kahn-harris.org/death-of-paul-arditti/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/death-of-paul-arditti/#commentsSun, 26 Jan 2014 11:45:15 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=695In my chapter on my search for the most powerful politician in Alderney, I interview Paul Arditti, one of the most controversial and influential of contemporary Alderney politicians. I just heard that he died suddenly, age 64. I’m not sure where this leaves my article, or where it leaves Alderney. I do know though that Read more ...

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/death-of-paul-arditti/feed/2Read the chapter: The most powerful politician in Alderneyhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-most-powerful-politician-in-alderney/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-most-powerful-politician-in-alderney/#commentsMon, 20 Jan 2014 17:04:21 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=692…and here’s the second chapter that I wrote for the book: on my quest to find the most powerful politician on Alderney: Alderney chapter pdf

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-most-powerful-politician-in-alderney/feed/0Read the chapter: The Best Waterskier in Luxembourghttp://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/#commentsMon, 20 Jan 2014 17:00:52 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=689One of the consolations of my Unbound project not getting funded is that I can make the two chapters I wrote freely available. So here’s the first one, in which I tell the tale of the best waterskier in Luxembourg and the surprisingly fascinating story of the Luxembourg waterskiing scene: Final chapter one pdf

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-the-chapter-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/feed/0Whatever happened to The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg?http://www.kahn-harris.org/whatever-happened-to-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/whatever-happened-to-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/#commentsMon, 20 Jan 2014 16:48:57 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=686So whatever did happen to The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg? In 2011 and 2012 I worked with the crowd-funded publishing site Unbound on a book called The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds. The idea was to choose – semi-randomly – a number of big fish in small ponds and then Read more ...

In 2011 and 2012 I worked with the crowd-funded publishing site Unbound on a book called The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds. The idea was to choose – semi-randomly – a number of big fish in small ponds and then go and find them and their stories. As well as the eponymous best waterskier, I sought to find the top politician in Alderney, the Icelandic special forces, Malta’s favourite soft drink, the top metal band in Botswana and the best selling novelist in Suriname.

I got a lot of publicity for the project and received a fair few pledges. I managed to go to Luxembourg and track down the best waterskier. I also got to Alderney where I found the top politician. And then…

Well, there’s no hiding the fact – I didn’t manage to raise all the money I needed. I managed to complete the Luxembourg and Alderney chapters, both of which are available to download. But I didn’t get to Iceland, Malta, Suriname or Botswana.

It was always a big ask and I’m grateful for those who did pledge money.

What happens now? Well, I’ve learned a lot from this project. Most importantly, I’ve learned that what appeared at first to be a fairly frivolous and light-hearted idea actually had more substance to it than I’d imagined. ‘Small ponds’ are important, they are places of passion, politics and community. I want to continue exploring these small worlds to which unsung heroes devote their lives. I also want to try and draw comparisons between them and maybe even help them to flourish and thrive better.

So watch this space. The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg may ride again, in a different – perhaps more serious – form.

I will put up the Alderney and Luxembourg chapters as downloads in separate posts.

Keep checking this website or my twitter account for further news. If you have any ideas or thoughts, I’d love to hear from you.

It’s been a blast exploring the brave new world of crowd-funding. Je ne regret rien!

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/whatever-happened-to-the-best-waterskier-in-luxembourg/feed/0My TEDx Krakow talk on ‘The Power of Small Worlds’http://www.kahn-harris.org/my-tedx-krakow-talk-on-the-power-of-small-worlds/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/my-tedx-krakow-talk-on-the-power-of-small-worlds/#commentsTue, 06 Nov 2012 16:53:59 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=546The talk I gave in September of this year at TEDx Krakow is now online. In it I talk about ‘The Power of Small Worlds’ and the pleasures of being a big fish in a small pond:

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/my-tedx-krakow-talk-on-the-power-of-small-worlds/feed/0The first review of The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg!http://www.kahn-harris.org/the-first-review-of-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/the-first-review-of-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/#commentsFri, 26 Oct 2012 16:41:34 +0000Keithhttp://www.kahn-harris.org/?p=509There’s a review of the first chapter of The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg in Souciant webzine – it’s a really nice one and I’m really chuffed. Read it here. …the sad truth is that most small ponds are also unnoticed ponds. It’s for that reason that I hope that the rest of Kahn-Harris’s book Read more ...

…the sad truth is that most small ponds are also unnoticed ponds. It’s for that reason that I hope that the rest of Kahn-Harris’s book is funded and is able to see the light of day. Just as he uncovered the heroes and nuances of the small water ski and wakeboard community in Luxembourg, there are many more small ponds left to be explored.

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/the-first-review-of-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/feed/0Read all about the Best Water Skier in Luxembourg!http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-all-about-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-all-about-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/#commentsThu, 20 Sep 2012 11:27:27 +0000adminhttp://localhost/kahn-harris/?p=460I’m pleased to announce that the first chapter of my book The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds, has been published and is ready to download. It finally reveals the identity of the best waterskier himself and contains lots of juicy stories about the Luxembourg water skiing scene. If you Read more ...

]]>I’m pleased to announce that the first chapter of my book The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds, has been published and is ready to download. It finally reveals the identity of the best waterskier himself and contains lots of juicy stories about the Luxembourg water skiing scene. If you have already pledged towards the book, go to my author ‘shed’ to download it. If not, then please considersupporting the project.

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/read-all-about-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/feed/0Interview on the Best Water Skier in Luxembourghttp://www.kahn-harris.org/interview-on-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/interview-on-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/#commentsSat, 25 Aug 2012 20:06:00 +0000adminhttp://localhost/kahn-harris/?p=6The lovely travel blogger Rachel Cotterill was kind enough to publish a short interview with me about my project The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg.

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/interview-on-the-best-water-skier-in-luxembourg/feed/0The pleasure and pain of crowd-fundinghttp://www.kahn-harris.org/the-pleasure-and-pain-of-crowd-funding/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/the-pleasure-and-pain-of-crowd-funding/#commentsSat, 25 Aug 2012 19:30:00 +0000adminhttp://localhost/kahn-harris/?p=7I bared my soul in a modest way in an article for The Literary Platform about my experience of crowd-funding my book, The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg, through the Unbound project. Here it is again: I’m stalled – there’s no other word for it – at 8% funded. After a promising start in which Read more ...

I’m stalled – there’s no other word for it – at 8% funded. After a promising start in which a steady trickle of supporters pledged towards my book, no one has signed up for over a week. The giddy hopes that accompanied the start of my project are being replaced with cold, hard reality.

That’s crowd-funding a book for you. Unless you are a household name or have a loyal following, it’s an insecure and even gut-wrenching business. However, my experience of crowd-funding has mainly been positive. Over the last year I’ve been working with Unbound, the crowd funding platform in which authors pitch their ideas directly to readers. Unlike other platforms, Unbound is not open to all and you have to submit your idea to them as you might do any other publishing company. If you’re picked up, Unbound kicks in a significant amount of money towards making a professional-quality pitch video and if the book gets funded, it’s published through their own imprint – so you’re not self-publishing.

My Unbound project, The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds, is a travel book in which I set myself the challenge of meeting the unknown heroes of obscure small worlds. I was one of the first projects Unbound took on and I benefited from the wave of publicity that accompanied the launch of the company. We started cautiously, as while I have published academic books, this was my first trade non-fiction work. From September to December 2011 the first chapter of the book, in which I aimed to meet the best water skier in Luxembourg, was open for funding. A gratifying number of people supported the chapter (helped by some novel incentives such as a postcard from me from Luxembourg) and I raised enough to visit Luxembourg and investigate the water skiing scene.

So far so good, but the real challenge has been the full ‘phase two’ of the project, in which I need to raise a lot of money to visit Iceland, Malta, Alderney, Suriname and Botswana. Since the project went up in the start of July, it’s been noticeably tougher to get support for the book than was the case last year. Pledges come in fits and starts, without any real momentum.

Crowd funding a book through Unbound requires hard graft. If you’re a relative unknown like myself, you have to get out there and ‘sell’ the project. And I’ve done just that: I’ve blitzed my Twitter and Facebook followers, sent emails, written articles and blog posts, appeared at literary nights and followed up any conceivable lead. I’ve risked annoying my friends with not-so-subtle requests for their pledges.

There are three principle challenges to this. The first is that it’s almost impossible to know in advance what will work. Some literary nights have brought me new supporters and others have not. Some tweets get retweeted and others never do. An email to something called The Listserve – a giant email list for which one person gets chosen at random every day to post to the list – unexpectedly resulted in many new pledges.

The second challenge is in converting interest into pledges. Everywhere I’ve talked about the book, I’ve had people approach me to say how interesting it sounds. I give them a promotional postcard and often never hear from them again. There’s plenty of good will but this doesn’t necessarily translate into cash.

The third challenge is finding people who will pledge at a high level. My project has levels of support, going up from £10 to £2000, with incentives to match. While every pledge is precious, what I really need is a few ‘whales’ – people who will give larger sums of money without necessarily being motivated by what they will get in return. On phase one of my project, the generosity of a couple of people like this did much to get me funded.

This ‘upfront’ work to get the book published is nerve-racking. What will happen if I don’t get funded? Here there is a parallel with more traditional publishing models. Unless you’re a writer with a proven track record and a multi-book contract, you have to do a lot of work to get picked up by a publisher or agent. For those at the start of their writing careers, it can take years to hone a book or book proposal into a state in which it will be picked up – with absolutely no guarantee that there will be anything at all to show for it. At least with Unbound I didn’t have to go through the agonies of drafting and redrafting proposals and sample chapters. Once I have the funding, it will be full steam ahead.

I’m sure that many would argue that it would be ultimately more beneficial for one’s career as a writer to front-load the actual writing of the book rather than front-loading the publicity for thebook. Yet there is a hidden benefit. One thing that will console me if my book never gets funded is that much of the work of selling my book idea has not only been fun, it has been worthwhile for its own sake: I’ve spoken to people I would never have spoken to before, I’ve written for publications I’d never have written for before (such as this one!), I’ve forced myself to get out there on twitter not just for self-promotion, but to contribute to the vast ongoing discussion.

In a much quoted and retweeted article a few weeks ago, Ewan Morrison convincingly argued that social media was not an effective tool for promoting self-published and other books. This may be correct – although social media have brought me new supporters – but it also misses the point a bit. If the networking and publicity work that crowd funding and other new publishing models require is not seen as a means to an end but an end in itself, then perhaps frustrated authors should learn to enjoy the process more. The challenge then is to find modes of self-promotion that are satisfying even if they do not lead to sales. This is why literary nights, speaker events and festivals are so important. Even if they don’t ‘work’ as forms of publicity, they certainly do work in being fun to take part in and as a way of meeting and connecting with people.

So I’m frustrated at how my project seems to have stalled. But I haven’t given up hope. And I don’t regret the work I’ve put into it. It’s been a blast even if the dream of a book at the end of it might be deferred for a while.

Keith Kahn-Harris is a London-based writer and sociologist, and you can find out more about his Unbound project here

]]>http://www.kahn-harris.org/the-pleasure-and-pain-of-crowd-funding/feed/0Why I want to visit Maltahttp://www.kahn-harris.org/why-i-want-to-visit-malta/
http://www.kahn-harris.org/why-i-want-to-visit-malta/#commentsThu, 26 Jul 2012 10:15:00 +0000adminhttp://localhost/kahn-harris/?p=13This is the third in a series of posts explaining the background behind the choice of places I am aiming to visit on my travels for my project The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds. The book is being crowd-funded via the innovative publisher Unbound and I would appreciate Read more ...

Malta was an obvious choice of destination for a chapter of my book. A nation of about 450,000 people, densely packed into three densely populated island of only 121 square miles in total, it is similar to Luxembourg and Iceland: countries that are big enough to have the full range of features of other states, but in miniature.

At the same time, the chapter that I hope to write about Malta is a little different from some of the other chapters. With Luxembourg, Alderney, Suriname and Alderney I knew virtually nothing about the object of my mission before starting out. With my mission to find Malta’s favourite soft drink, I’m drawing on a longstanding obsession – not so much obsession with Malta but an obsession with soft drinks.

I’m not addicted to sugary liquids, although I do enjoy them. Rather, it’s what soft drinks represent that interests me. Soft drinks are neglected by writers and gourmets in favour of alcoholic drinks, which have an image of complexity and sophistication that soft drinks do not. Soft drinks are vulgar, filled with sugar and chemicals. They are childish, fit only for those who cannot drink alcohol and are too immature to be content with water as a thirst-quencher. Even more expensive soft drinks like Elderflower pressé are seen as, at best, substitutes for alcoholic drinks.

Part of the problem is that soft drinks are dominated by the leviathans of Coca-Cola, Pepsi and the like. Even for those who have no problem with multinational corporations per se may see corporate soft drink culture as something difficult to treasure.

But soft drinks are more interesting than they might at first seem. For one thing, if you look beyond the obvious – the Sprites and Cokes – there is a whole world of taste sensations that awaits the aspiring soft drink aficionado. A drink like Japan’s Pocari Sweat doesn’t just attract because of the bizarre name, but by the extraordinary and indefinable range of flavours it contains.

What really excites me about soft drinks is how you can trace the characteristics of globalisation and contemporary capitalism through them. It is striking how far the diversity of soft drink provision has declined in recent decades. When I was young, there were still places, like cinemas, where you couldn’t get Coke or Sprite, where the likes of Panda Pops or obscure orange squash drinks ruled. Every country had its Coke substitute or competitor, like Israel’s Kinley Cola. Today, the last bastions of resistance to Coke and Pepsi have mostly been conquered.

Yet some redoubts of soft drink diversity remain – and one of them is Malta. The small Mediterranean island state is home to one of the glories of the soft drink world: Kinnie. Kinnie is a bitter orange based drink that manages to balance complexity (its exact formula is a secret), the sharp bitterness of orange and the kick of sugar. It tastes great in the sun as I discovered on my visit to Malta in 2000.

From what I can tell, Kinnie appears to be thriving. It’s 60 years old this year and the company that makes it, Farsons, has even made tentative forays into selling the drink abroad. From conversations with Maltese, it appears that Kinnie is an important part of Maltese identity – they even serve it at the Maltese embassy in London.

If it looks like I already know what I am going to find on my mission to find Malta’s favourite soft drink, things aren’t as simple as they might seem. Coke et al are sold on the island and I need to establish what drink actually sells the best. As with every other chapter in the book, I’m on the hunt for stories. I want to meet the people from Farsons, as well as the local representatives of Coke and Pepsi and hear what they think. I want to visit the Kinnie factory and learn about its history. I want to get under the skin of what it is to be Maltese and what part Kinnie plays in Maltese identity.

It may be of course that Coke or a similar brand may be Malta’s favourite soft drink in terms of sales. Still, I make this vow: when my book is published, Kinnie will be the drink of choice at the launch party.